I watched Hellboy: Storm of Swords a few years back. It had one really great sequence, an adaptation of the "Heads" story from the comic; the rest was decent but forgettable.

So that's why I never got around to watching Blood and Iron until tonight.

It turns out Blood and Iron is the secret best Hellboy movie -- at any rate, it's the one that feels most like the comic; it's got the gothic horror vibe down.

It's very much Professor Broom's story, because when you've got John Hurt doing a voice in your animated movie, you damn-well write the script around him. (I think he's got more screentime than he did in the live-action movie. He sounds off in the flashbacks, though, like they artificially pitch-adjusted his voice to make him sound younger; that part's a little off-putting and probably my biggest complaint about the whole thing.) But Hellboy gets a good big fight with Hecate for the last ten minutes or so. And Liz kinda gets short-changed but gets one good scene where she gets to burn some shit up.

Aside from Hurt, the rest of the principal cast is there too, in Perlman, Jones, and Blair. (No Jeffrey Tambor. His character is in the movie but only for about five minutes, so I can understand not going to the time and expense to bring him in.)

Wonder if it's a likeness rights thing. (That's definitely why Gordon looks nothing like Neil Hamilton.) They drew him with the 'stache in the recent Batman '66 comics, but likeness rights for a comic are probably cheaper than for a movie, even of the direct-to-video animated variety.

Then again, it could just be the inconvenience of adding that level of fine detail to the character design. Hard to say. I gotta figure it at least came up in discussion.

Judging by the first episode: well look, I knew the plots were dopey even when I watched it the first time at the age of seven or eight. But the dialogue is actually pretty solid, and definitely has the characters' voices down. And speaking of voices, the cast is fantastic: it doesn't just have Reeves, Winter, and Carlin reprising their roles from the movie; the credits also include Phil Hartman, Jonathan Winters, Jeffrey Tambor, and Little Richard. (I don't know why Maurice LaMarche's name is spelled "LaMarcife". I assume somebody misread somebody's handwriting.)

I know everybody got recast in season 2, but I haven't gotten that far yet.